The University of Michigan Wolverines received 51 first-place votes en route to a number-one ranking in the AP Top 25 on Monday. The school reached the top of the college basketball (regular season) world for the first time in more than twenty years. The last number-one-ranked Michigan team existed in 1992.
Michigan is ranked second in the USA Today Coaches Poll, with 14 of 30 total first-place votes. (Kansas is first in that category with the other 16.)
That Wolverines 1992 squad had a very different look than the current one. It had four future NBA players on its roster, including two with long tenures in the league and another with a borderline hall-of-fame career. Five freshmen were in the starting lineup for the Wolverines by the end of the 1991-1992 season in a group called the "Fab Five."
Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson stayed with Michigan for at least two years each (both of those leading to a championship game appearance). Both King and Jackson completed their four years of NCAA eligibility, while Webber left after two seasons and both Rose and Howard stayed through their respective junior campaigns.
The Fab Five consisted of four top-ten high school prospects and another (Jackson) in the top 100. Webber and Rose both came from in-state Detroit, while Howard left Chicago for the chance to play for Michigan and Texas was the previous home of King and Jackson.
The closer of the two championship games the team made was a 77-71 loss to the University of North Carolina in 1993. UNC led 73-71 late in the game when Webber had the ball and called timeout when his team had none left. The Tar Heels picked up points on the ensuing free throws after the technical foul was assessed, and held the Wolverines scoreless the rest of the way.
Webber was taken as the first overall pick in the 1993 NBA Draft and had career averages of 20.7 points, 9.8 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game in fifteen seasons. Rose was drafted the following season and played in the NBA through 2007. Howard is the only player from the Fab Five to have ever won a championship, notching a ring in the twilight of his career with the Miami Heat in 2011-2012. King played two seasons in the NBA and Jackson never reached the highest level of professional basketball.
Those years in the early 1990's proved to be great ones in Ann Arbor, and not just for basketball fans. The men's hockey team made the NCAA Frozen Four in the two seasons that the basketball Wolverines made it to the last game of March Madness.
The current Michigan team is the third best shooting team in the country with a .510 field goal percentage and has only one loss this season to its most bitter rival, Ohio State. The Wolverines have won their only other two match-ups against ranked teams, and face Northwestern on Wednesday. Michigan will have a chance to exact revenge against the Buckeyes on February 5.
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